


À votre santé

by Spatz



Category: Banlieue 13 (Movies)
Genre: Cooking, Family, Food, Friendship, Gen, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:33:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28134744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spatz/pseuds/Spatz
Summary: When Leïto showed up for their weekly dinner by climbing in through the window, Lola knew he'd done something stupid.Four meals: before, during, and after.
Relationships: Leïto & Lola (Banlieue 13), Leïto/Damien Tomaso, Lola & Damien Tomaso
Comments: 15
Kudos: 18
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	À votre santé

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zinc_carpenter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zinc_carpenter/gifts).



> Lola and Leïto's quarter-Vietnamese heritage is very loosely inspired by David Belle and [his father's history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkour#Raymond_and_David_Belle), though I've shifted the war he was orphaned in from the First Indochina War to the Vietnam War for obvious timeline reasons.

**1 – Leïto & Lola**

When Leïto showed up for their weekly dinner by climbing in through the window, Lola knew he'd done something stupid. Stupidly noble, probably, but still stupid.

Lola sighed, and poured him a glass of wine as he swung neatly over the sill. “What'd you do this time?” she asked. If Leïto was coming in through the window, it meant he didn't want to be seen coming in through the doors to visit his sister – his backward way of protecting her. Her apartment was on the fourth floor, so the window wasn't an easy climb, either. The building was in the better part of B13 – there weren't any good parts of B13, but her job at the supermarket meant that she could afford something better than living with her brother, who stubbornly refused to leave the building they grew up in, even with Taha's gang aggressively taking over the area.

He ignored her question and came over to peer at the pot of soup she'd made. “What are you making?” he asked.

“Bahn cahn,” Lola said, handing Leïto his wine. It had been one of their father's favorites. She'd wanted to make pho bo, but the market had been out of the right noodles all week, so she'd bought some udon from the Japanese lady two floors down who sold them as a side business and made do. 

They'd mostly eaten French dishes as children, until their mother died. Lola had taken over the cooking less because she wanted to and more because her father had just assumed she would, being a girl. But they needed to eat, and she'd liked it, sort of. At least, until ingredients started getting scarcer and shittier in the store, food started being more expensive and less fresh at the markets, and their father's face more pinched and worried as work in the neighborhood became rare. 

He'd started spending more time teaching Leïto how to run around the neighborhood in the crazy way he did, using walls and corners and whatever was in his path, and most importantly, his mind. Leïto had always loved the stories their father told about growing up in an army camp in Vietnam, orphaned and hungry but running the obstacle courses at night to get stronger, but their father hadn't really encouraged him to learn until things started getting bad.

Lola had tried running with them, but she was too short, too skinny, fast and tough but agonizingly slow to put on muscle. She wasn't bad at finding ways to slip away from pursuit on the ground, though, and Papa _had_ taught her a few things about being small and taking down a larger opponent that made her sad when she thought too long about why he'd learned them. Finally, Lola had taken a book of Vietnamese recipes out of the library – which she'd accidentally stolen, later, by not returning it before the libraries abruptly shut down – and made some pho, just to see if she could make him smile with some food from his childhood.

He'd walked in the door and frozen there as the smell of meat and cilantro and spices hit him, an expression of stunned grief so deep it was hard to look. Later, he'd smiled at the taste of the food, but Lola could see tears in his eyes. He never talked about his parents, and Lola had never been quite sure if he even remembered them, not until that moment.

But he'd asked her to make it again, so she did.

As things in the neighborhood got worse, she cooked it more and more, part comfort food and part economy: the ingredients were pretty cheap, especially once she got pots of basil, mint, cilantro, and lemongrass to grow in the window. The woman at the market who sold spices had even given her a little potted chili pepper plant before she packed up and fled to Lyon to live with her son's family.

When Papa died, she kept cooking for Leïto, once a week, regular as clockwork. She tried to forget the memory of when he'd mistaken Lola for their mother on his deathbed, and apologized, in tears, for not giving them a better life. She was going to _make_ her life better, and fuck anyone who told her otherwise.

But Leïto had gone the other direction, furious and stubborn. He clung to their childhood home and fought bitterly even as the neighborhood shrank and rotted and grew walls around the edges.

Leïto asked, “How long until it's ready?” He propped his chin distractingly on the top of her head – Lola knew she was short, must he rub it in all the time? – and reached for the pile of chopped herbs at the edge of her peripheral vision.

“Don't even think about it,” she ordered, batting his hand away. “We can eat as soon as you get the bowls down.” 

Leïto grinned – maybe a little too brightly? Was he trying too hard to pretend everthing was fine? – and turned to grab the nicer bowls off the higher shelf where she kept them, just for their dinners together. 

Lola sighed. She hated Taha too, but she wanted to _live_. She couldn't stop Leïto from picking fights, or protect him from the people he was picking fights with; she couldn't even find new books for him to read, most of the time. But she could still cook for him.

**2 – Damien**

“Hey, Benito!”

François tossed him a sandwich, and Damien made sure to fumble obviously when he caught it. He nodded his thanks – Benito was always grateful, always polite, never took offense or caused a fuss – but suppressed a grimace as he opened the wrapping: pâté cornichon, and not good quality. He sniffed discreetly and took a small bite. The baguette was stale, way too much garlic in the meat, and the pickles were somehow soggy instead of crunchy. 

_Unconscionable_ , he could almost hear his mother saying, the way she used to shake her head at the market over produce she deemed unworthy and overpriced. For a moment he could feel the ghost of her hands over his, guiding his fingers on the handle of a kitchen knife, the rich warm smell of ratatouille on the stove. He didn't get to use those lessons much, but he still remembered every trick, every recipe.

But across the room, Carlos said, “Ah, my favorite! Nobody makes it like this place anymore. So many rules about the fucking meat, eh?”

Carlos Montoya was, at first glance, an easy mark: his vanity was blindingly obvious, his temper fiery; he wasn't subtle in general, and he went through underlings at a breakneck pace. They didn't send Damien after easy marks, though. The man's paranoia was just as strong as his vanity, and sycophancy made him suspicious like nothing else. Damien had to walk a careful line: obedient but not servile, capable but not too clever, all reinforced with careful mirroring of Carlos's habits – including his hair, unfortunately – to whisper quietly _I'm safe, I'm like you, you can trust me_ , until it was too late for Carlos to evade the coming trap.

So he took a bite of the shitty sandwich and forced his face into something like eagerness, apologizing to his mother's memory silently. He'd finish this job and spend a week making nothing but good food, victorious, and it would all be worth it.

**3 – Leïto, Lola, & Damien**

“– and there we all are, pointing our guns at each other, poised on the edge of a bloodbath that would start the biggest gang war Paris has ever seen... and the fucking cat comes back in the room.”

“No,” Lola gasped. Leïto started to laugh, muffling it behind his hand. He could see where this was going.

“Strolls right into the middle of the standoff, I swear to god! And like all cats, she had a sixth sense for finding the one person who least wanted her around, so she goes right up to Bernard where he's lying on the ground, still holding the grenade, and starts rubbing herself all over him.”

“Oh no!” Lola's face was still too thin, but her eyes were bright and her skin had color in it again, now that she was done with rehab. Right now, she was almost glowing with delight, and Leïto was so grateful he could cry.

Damien grinned at both of them, his eyes catching Leïto's for a moment as they both silently appreciated Lola's happiness. “Everyone is watching the cat now, just waiting,” he said, leaning forward conspiratorially. “Bernard sneezes–” he slapped his hand on the table, “– but he holds onto the grenade. Then he keeps sneezing! Bright red at this point, tears streaming from his eyes–” Damien pulled a ridiculous face to illustrate; he was a surprisingly skilled storyteller, for an uptight supercop, but Leïto supposed he knew how to play to an audience if he was such an undercover expert. “Then the cat flicks her tail right in Bernard's face, and he sneezes so hard that he drops the grenade.”

Lola had her hands half-covering her face as she waited for the punchline, even though obviously Damien had made it out alive.

“Thank god, everyone was too busy diving for the grenade to start shooting, and I got my hands on it first. I still had the pin, so I put it back in, and the whole room breathed a sigh of relief.”

“And then what? Did Thierry apologize?”

Damien smiled slowly, letting the suspense build. “I handed the grenade back to Bernard and said, 'Santé!'”

Lola and Leïto burst out laughing. Damien looked smug, and concluded, “Of course, his good health was not meant to be, because his lieutenant assassinated him two weeks later, but nobody died that day. And that is the closest I've ever come to dying with even getting a scratch.”

Leïto, still snickering, lifted his glass. “À votre santé,” he said, and they all laughed. 

Seven months ago, he never would have thought he'd be sitting at a table with a cop and his sister, finishing a good meal, half-drunk and happy, but here they were. Maybe things really would work out in the end.

**4 – Lola & Damien**

“–finally gave me a key so I went over after finishing up at the commissioner's office. I thought I'd cook dinner, but he had nothing in his kitchen!” Damien crossed his arms in irritation, and Lola tilted her head to show she was listening but kept folding bahn bao.

“Literally nothing?”

“He had protein shakes, butter, and a baguette so stale I could have killed someone with it.” He paused, considering. “Three different ways.”

“Wow, that's a new low. Usually he has some takeout boxes, at the very least.”

Damien sighed. “He's been busy with the new library initiative, to be fair. And his insomnia's been bad, so he's been using that as an excuse to work _more_ hours on it – you know how Cecile is having her baby in a few weeks?”

“Already?” Lola said. “It's only–! Oh, right. It's September now.” She twisted the dumpling in her hands a little too hard in annoyance. “So he's doing more of the work so she can leave early, then?”

“Exactly.” Damien looked frustrated – ah, the familiar dilemma of loving her brother for being the best, and also wanting to strangle him for being an idiot without self-preservation instincts. 

“Well,” Lola said, tapping her fingers thoughtfully on the counter. “If you know his insomnia's been bad, clearly your sex life is doing alright.”

Damien choked.

Hiding her smile, Lola continued, “So you need to try luring him away from work earlier in the day, which means food. Here, go wash your hands.” She shoved at him with her elbow, since her hands were coated in flour, and Damien was flustered enough that he obeyed.

“Why am I washing my hands?” Damien asked belatedly over the splash of water, reaching for the soap.

“I'm going to teach you how to make Leïto's favorite foods,” she said. “But first, you're going to help me finish these bao.”

Damien grinned over his shoulder at her, and Lola smiled. It was going to be nice to have another brother around, especially if this one liked to cook.


End file.
